


Namesakes and all that came before

by ivyfernleaflet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Children, Gen, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Not Epilogue Compliant, POV Child, POV Female Character, POV Outsider, Trans Character, Werewolf Draco Malfoy, various nonbinary weasleys? in my fic? it's more likely than you think!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyfernleaflet/pseuds/ivyfernleaflet
Summary: Lily was named after quite a few people, and yet no one ever wants to plainly speak of the past.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Namesakes and all that came before

**Author's Note:**

> ** disclaimer: this creator has no problem with exploring problematic, objectionable, and obscene content in fiction and ships, and has done so in the past in fanworks (and will likely do so in the future, as well). if interacting with an individual who writes the aforementioned will inspire vehement response, then here is your warning. if my nsfw and/or obscene works discredit my other works in your eyes, please feel free to disengage as needed. **
> 
> this was some impulsive thing i typed up during a lunch break some time early-mid 2019. i was considering committing to it and making it a longer thing but never got the time, and figured... might as well clean it up and post it. now's as good as ever. i likely won't continue it, but it was fun to write. very queer, very not epilogue compliant, and leans into the following ideas:
> 
> if harry decided to adopt, he'd adopt one child for fear of pitting any of his offspring against each other ; his child would be given his mother's namesake, as he carries his father's (i.e. the oc pov character "lily" is not epilogue!lily -- this lily is likely ambiguously brown and multiracial, as harry saw her and identified with her right away) ; harry's desi because of course, and hermione's black because double of course ; draco was bitten by greyback during the war as lucius's punishment for failing voldemort ; various nonbinary weasleys? in my fic? it's more likely than you think! some nb alternatives to family titles: **un** cle + **kin** = unkin, **av** uncular + **aunt** = avaunt -- ron's nieces and nephews call them avaunt ron, too ; golden trio but also drarry, with polyam harry ; this oc child's full, absurd name, "lily 'linde' albus snape potter" is certainly... A Name, which is only to be expected of gryffindors and slytherins, who definitely share a dramatic quotient that ravenclaws and hufflepuffs likely roll their eyes at ; there's something to be said for snape being unquestionably heroic in the war effort but also, still, an ass. he can be both. he absolutely was both ; dumbledore was flawed and made mistakes but was trying his best and was definitely motivated by love, especially at the end there concerning harry (i.e. i am fond of both snape and dumbledore, so please leave me be).
> 
> \-- 🍃

After Lily's latest outing with her Uncle Percy with her cousins ( -- a trip to the library and then to Fortescue's to keep them all preoccupied during an impromptu trip to the Ministry where they got to wait in the ever-bustling lobby while he ran up and sorted something out -- ), she found that her uncle, really, wasn't that bad. Some of her cousins were dramatic and lively and exaggerated that he was boring, but Lily disagreed. He really just knew where to set the line, and then took those lines very seriously. Also, he'd at least gotten them ice cream. She'd had fun, nibbling at her vanilla-and-strawberry swirl while watching people with magical creature complaints try to direct magicked animals across marble towards the front desk; those with confiscated items struggle to handle things like a scale that yelled about having nothing to weigh, or a purse trying to eat every hand in sight. She explained as much to her dad and moms when they asked.

"Perce is a rule-follower," Mama Ron liked to say, and did so now. "Always liked peace and order, which, you know. Hilarious."

"As a Gryffindor or as a Weasley?" Dad would usually joke back, grinning. Mama Hermione usually rolled her eyes, and would say, "everyone in the Weasley family isn't a rule _breaker_ by definition. There's a part of your family that takes after your father, and a part of your family that takes after your mother." Lily noticed that she didn't point out which family took after who, and who was which thing -- but Lily already knew Mama Hermione thought Pop-Pop was rule follower except for his own special, small cases, and that Mama Ron and Uncle Percy and Avaunt Charlie were like him. This meant everyone left -- Uncle Bill, Uncle George, Uncle Fred (who Lily only knew from stories), Unkin Ginny -- was a rule breaker (and _maker_ , Lily privately thought), like, Gram-Gram.

Mama Ron seemed to notice the unsaid point too, but they didn't ever seem to be taken back by it. "As a Gryffindor, then," Mama Ron would settle on definitively. Then they'd get defiant and jab a finger in Mama Hermione's face. "Don't even start with me, Hermione, you broke more legitimate laws while we were in school than school codes of conduct, which is way, way worse I'd have to say. Right, Harry?"

And to that, Dad would grin a little and usually sweep Lily up into his arms, kissing at her cheeks and saying, "I dunno, don't want to set a bad example for the _baby_ , and pick _sides,"_ which was some kind of adult, secret inside joke, as far as Lily could tell. Something that preceded her, preceded Dad adopting her and marrying Papa, in that order, backwards as anything, but still okay. 

It didn't precede Dad living with and loving her mamas though, _not_ in that order. "I've always loved your mamas," Dad had told her once, when he'd thought she was mostly asleep and couldn't hear him -- or wouldn't remember it, maybe. "From the first year, when I set eyes on Ron and later on got to know Hermione for who she really was. I've always loved them. Sometimes, I wonder if it wasn't them who really taught me to love."

Dad had a hard time saying those kinds of things out loud. Lily knew that was one of those secret adult things too, the ones that they wouldn't tell her about. Things that preceded her, and that she'd have to work out for herself one day, with clues and luck and a little magic.

* * *

"Your father thinks wearing his heart on his sleeve excuses him from having to use his words," was how Papa explained it. "Typical of his lot, all pride and bluster. Not like us." This was always when Papa would look at her like they shared some sort of secret, gazing at her with pride and mischief in his pale eyes, softening the angles of his sharp face in a familiar way. Papa was built sharp but made to soften his edges, always and especially for her. "Gryffindors. Who needs them, hm, Li'linde?" 

This was her papa's nickname for her. She always found it amazing, the way he could make the diminutive 'little' sound graceful, flowing into the pretty endearment of _Linde._ It wasn't truly 'little' at front, anyhow -- it more so was her name shortened, 'Lily' into 'Li', because no nickname was really allowed to supersede a relic to her grandmom that Dad himself had never gotten to meet and know. There was something sacred about being a living memory, and she knew it and Papa knew it. Dad didn't really realize there was a hidden importance he himself put in her name, but she and Papa knew, and knew they had to respect that. 

So, for that reason, yes: Lily became 'Li', to tack onto the maybe harsh-sounding ancient word for snake. For serpent. Maybe it was coarse, in a way -- but mostly, to her, it sounded like a loving claim. It rang true of _'you are a Malfoy, you are a Black, and those things don't have to mean what they once did'._ It spoke of the claim from her papa. _'My little serpent,'_ it meant, _'My little beauty. My gentle daughter, soft and willowy as a tree, part of nature, part of this world. Willing to wait, willing to shield and to bend and to love. My little serpent. My lovely daughter.'_ Li'linde. 

Dramatic, Mama Ron always said; absurd, Mama Hermione always said. "Almost beautifully French," Aunt Fleur had once commented. "Old German can have it's rare spots of beauty too, I suppose." 

Yes, maybe her papa's gifted name for her was dramatic and absurd, but they could bond over that, in their personal ways. Lily, who knew Papa loved certain people more than he could bear most days, knew precisely how to read between the lines of what he did and didn't say. With her name, and with the way her papa talked about people and things, she simply... understood. He was a man with a lot of feelings, ones he didn't always like to share -- and yet couldn't help but convey them somehow, for good or for bad.

With Dad, Papa both bloomed and shuddered under the burden of how much he loved him. She knew his barely-surface deep insults were his way of not letting the weight of his own feelings crush him. He loved her dad. They were both honestly crazy about each other, and that was the most important part of it. Papa had told her stories of school day mishaps and of _'being a little prat, to be honest,'_ and she recognized something he'd never outright said: that he'd laid eyes on Dad, and fallen hopelessly in love right away.

"I was always so obsessed with him," Papa would say with a grimace. "And with -- everything -- the way it was, well. It took on a bad tint, I would say. I'm not proud of it. It was -- a different time. I was a different person."

He always said it all so awkwardly, because Lily wasn't supposed to know too much about the First and Second War and the way the momentary lull between the two hadn't been as perfect and simple and _good_ as anyone had made it out to be at the time. Grandfather, before he'd passed, had shown her his Dark Mark and told her a little about it, one of the few times she'd been left on her own with him. Grandfather had been -- cold, and foreign, and a little scary, but she'd always liked that he would treat her like an adult. He was best with Grandmother, who was sharp and direct like Papa, but also had a way of softening for Lily -- also like Papa. And Grandmother's ways had always made Grandfather easier to navigate, easier to understand, if only a little.

So, she knew more about the wars and the momentary peace than any of her parents or aunts and uncles and unkins and avaunts knew she did. And so, still, Papa tried to dance around it, things like how school houses became placeholders for unsaid alliances, past and present and then eventually near-future. How Papa had been very mean to a lot of people when they were all children, and that he'd learned to regret it -- even back then -- after the war started up again. After he'd learned of real darkness, as Grandfather spoke of it back when he'd explained things. That childhood battles, childhood certainties in black and white and right and wrong and _you have nothing to fear, as the things that go bump in the night are on your side,_ all came into question and, ultimately, splintered apart as silliness and falsehoods during wartime.

Papa didn't even talk about his bite, something Grandfather had told her more about after showing her the Dark Mark. Told her that Papa had been punished for Grandfather's mistakes, and that meant instead of a matching tattoo, he'd gotten the lovingly vicious fangs of Fenrir Greyback sunk into him, in the precise place a Dark Mark would have gone. 

Lily could imagine that vividly, and it terrified her. But Grandfather had spoken of the Dark Mark first, then looked her in the eyes and asked, "Do you know that your father is a werewolf? It's my fault. He blames me, as he should. It was the start of the darkest times he should have never had to endure. Your Grandmother has never forgiven me, and that's as it should be, too."

Lily wasn't sure about all that -- but she did know that Papa was a werewolf, yes. That wasn't something Papa would have ever hid from his child, Dad had once told her very seriously. So she knew, and she knew that he worried about it and about accidentally biting her, because sometimes he had nightmares and mumbled things -- usually when Dad had to go away to Hogwarts to teach, or spent the night with her mamas at their first house, instead of at the second house with Papa. Because even though Dad and Papa were crazy about each other, Papa and Mama Hermione were only on civil speaking terms, and he and Mama Ron were on the barest of tolerances with one another. Lily remembered it being worse, when she was really little, so she was hoping it'd continue to settle out in time. She often said so, hoping to speak it into existence.

"Hm, you get that optimism from your father," Papa said, obviously not agreeing that it'd happen. "Those two think Potter's got shit taste. And maybe so."

"I think you're pretty great," Lily pointed out, making herself comfortable in his lap.

"Do you? I don't know if you should." He had a way of not letting the past unhook its claws from him. His eyes wandered around his study as he sighed. Lily pushed the parchment and quills on his desktop further away from them both. Penning letters could wait for a spell.

"You know, it's so funny that you bear his namesake," Papa said, his focus flitting off onto another topic, making light conversation with possibly heavy topics. He was winding a wayward tight curl of her hair around his finger before tucking it behind her ear. "Dumbledore, I mean. Snape, too. And in alphabetical order of all things -- but Potter's, of course, also playing favorites. I know. I would have too, if you'd been mine first." He snorted lightly, though Lily didn't entirely follow why. She stayed quiet and merely listened to him, tilting her head back against his chest so she could peer up at him. He peered back down at her, half smiling. 

"Imagine. A child of mine, with either of their names. A small wonder of wonders. Well, Potter always had an awful sense of humor, along with his taste." Papa laughed hollowly. "Though I guess that's not really funny, if you think about it." At this, his gaze lost focus and went faraway, his eyes locked on her face but not really seeing her. His long fingers began stroking the side of her face carefully. He kept staring at her, unseeing, until she reached up and patted his wrist, to which he startled slightly, but began to smile for real.

Lily was glad her grandfather had told her even a little bit of the things no one wanted her to know. It made understanding these sort of confusing moments of her dads, of her moms, of her large extended family, easier. She was glad for it. She really was. Lily Albus Snape Potter. Lily 'Linde' Albus Snape Potter, according to her Papa. She carried a lot of legacies and ghosts with her everywhere she went, from names alone. It was silly that so many adults in her family thought she didn't need to be armed for the burden that would inevitably bring her. But she would manage.


End file.
